It's not easy being not orange . . .

I have discovered that, by some sort of massive sartorial oversight, I have arrived in the Netherlands without one one single piece of blaze orange clothing to my name.  It is plenty tragic.  The enormity of this problem was brought home to me as I was traveling home from Leiden Friday evening.  The train was very crowded--surprisingly crowded, I thought, considering that one would have expected the rush hour to be leaving Rotterdam at that time of the day.  But, as we went through more and more train stations, more and more people started to climb on and it got more and more crowded.  Not only that, the closer we got to Rotterdam, the more orange people were wearing.  Blaze orange shirts.  Neon orange jackets.  Bright orange fluffy earmuffs bigger than their heads.  Blaze orange feather boas.  Neon orange foam cowboy hats (apparently this is a real Dutch thing.  I have no idea why).  Bright orange jeans.  I have run through my list of appropriate modifiers.  Suffice it to say, everyone was very bright, neon, blaze, brilliant (hey, there's another one) orange.  My giant blaze orange hunting jacket would have been perfect.

The reason for all of this orange, and for everyone heading to Rotterdam, was that the Netherlands were playing Moldova, in Rotterdam, in the EuroCup Soccer Qualifiers.  The Dutch national soccer team is called the Oranjes (which means "oranges" (as in multiples of the color, not as in the fruit) and is pronounced or-an-yus).  The Oranjes' fighting song is "Hup Holland Hup" (Go Holland Go) but, in looking for a good You Tube video it appears that most people don't even remember that part of the song and, instead, sing "Lo, lo, lo, lo, lo" to the tune of "Hup Holland Hup."  The fact that many of the people in the videos appear to have been partaking freely of spirituous beverages may be one of the reasons no one can remember the words.  If you go here, though, you can see a very short video of people wearing orange and funny hats, and forgetting the words to "Go Holland Go."

My very favorite Dutch football thing, though, is a picture of a guy that I found on a report from a big Dutch win over Italy a few years back.  You can see the whole video here, if you want, but it is almost 6 minutes long and the reporting is all in Dutch (although it does have some pretty fun footage mixed in there).  This photo, though, is priceless.  This fellow seems pleased with the way things have turned out.  His shirt says "We will make hamburger out of you" but I think it almost sounds better in Dutch.

Now, I am off to find something orange to wear.

(P.S.--"Gehakt" just means chopped.  An alternate translation of the vest (or possibly a butcher's apron?) would be "We'll make minced meat out of you."  However, if you are in the grocery store, looking at the meat section, hamburger is just labeled "gehakt" so that it is also a legitimate translation.  Plus, I like it better that way.)

(P.P.S.--I am sure you are dying to know:  the Oranjes won!  Now they have to play some one else at a different qualifying match but they are the official winners of the group E qualifiers.  Whatever that means.)

(P.P.P.S.--That win resulted in a lot of late night fireworks and carrying on.  As near as I can figure, the stadium is 2 or 3 miles away from my house and I was still able to hear the chanting and screaming during the game.)

(P.P.P.P.S.--Now, I think that I know why the "van ze" is in a larger font than the rest of the font although, I will freely admit, puns are one of those things you probably need more experience to get for sure and it could be just to make the point more emphatic but, the Dutch name for Venice (which, as far as I can tell, is the most popular vacation place for Dutch folk) is "venitie" which is pronounced kind of like van-i-tse, which, especially if you are kind of drunk, could sound like a pun on "van ze" and, since this was a game against Italy, it is just possible that that was what he was going for.  Or maybe he was just trying to make it fit width wise.)